Although Howard Dean’s comments on Southern voters are tasteless and altogether insensitive, they are not surprising. His remarks are consistent with the rest of the country’s view of the South, views that are often perpetuated through the ill-informed mass media.
Yes, pickup trucks bearing the Confederate battle flag abound in the South, but it certainly isn’t everybody. You wouldn’t know that from the movies.
Times have changed since 1961. Yet, the media still perpetuate the stereotypical South as a backwoods, intolerant and most of all, ignorant place.
Our racial problems should not be ignored, but constant reminders of hatred and ignorance, both real and imagined, from movies and television only make the problem worse.
One only has to watch television for so long before common misconceptions of the South are reiterated. White Southerners are either hateful of stupid, or both, while black Southerners often are the epitome of illiterate wisdom.
Many people consider the bible of ante-bellum Southern culture to be the movie version of “Gone With the Wind,” and its images of Mammy in the big house taking care of all the white folks. Margaret Mitchell’s book, which is also largely disillusioned, gave a slightly more accurate view of Southern culture, but Hollywood thought it was unnecessary and kept those parts out of the film. Therefore, many people think all Southerners are so ignorant as to view slavery romantically, as the benevolent institution the movie depicted.
Hollywood’s version of southern sexual perversion (unlike the balanced perversion of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor) is seen in the movie “Deliverance.” The mountain people who reside where that movie was filmed are generally gentle and kind, yet “Squeal like a little piggy,” and “Dueling Banjos” resonates with a lot of people as the mantra of the Appalachians.
Emulation of scenes from this movie prove its impact. Quentin Tarantino, who ironically proclaims he doesn’t include stereotypes in his movies, salutes “Deliverance” in his otherwise brilliant film “Pulp Fiction.” The marker to let audiences know the raping antagonists are Southern is none other than the Confederate battle flag.
The cancelled cartoon “Family Guy,” which is increasingly gaining cult status, spoofed “Deliverance.” The episode was basically one big hysterical Southern stereotype. But what is seriocomical is that people actually believe those stereotypes truly represent the South. Fox wouldn’t allow an episode that made fun of Jewish stereotypes to air, so why was it acceptable to air this one?
Because the South is one of the few remaining politically correct targets to make fun of in polite society? Well, Jeb, move away from there.
Why does almost everyone with a Southern accent on screen have horrible grammar? Not everyone in the South uses double negatives and the term “that there.” Afflicted or blessed with a strong Southern accent myself, I often find people’s eyes glaze over when I begin to speak, as though a rural Southern accent were a sure sign of ignorance. Am I Ellie May Clampett come to town?
The 1961 centennial of the Civil War led Walker Percy to write in a “Commonweal” article, “It is true that a lot of Confederate flags are being waved in the South. But if it weren’t the flag, it would something else. Racism has no sectional monopoly. Nor was the Confederate flag a racist symbol. But it is apt to be now. The symbol is the same, but the referent has changed. Now when the Stars and Bars flies over a convertible or a speedboat or a citizens’ meeting, what it signifies is not a theory of government but a certain attitude toward the [African American].”
The Confederate flag once represented a people. Now it represents something so much different. Slavery was the South’s, America’s original sin. Through equality and diversity, the South is repenting for that sin.
The time has come when we as people, both black and white, should stand up to this prejudice, to reject both Pharisaism from the rest of the country and those who try to politically befriend us by telling us our old ways are just fine. They weren’t and they aren’t.
“Well I hope [Howard Dean] will remember — a Southern man don’t need him around anyhow…”